Playing in front of 25,000 people and millions more on television, and performing and doing what I worked so hard to try to accomplish was, in my opinion, the ultimate. Do I miss it? Of course I do.

Tennis was always there for me, which was lucky. I would go play baseball, basketball, football, hang with my brother, do whatever, and at the end of the day I'd come back and say, 'Hey, Mom, would you hit 15 minutes worth of balls with me?'

There was never anything I wanted to do more than play tennis. Never once walked out there and thought, 'I wish I was doing something else.' Not once.

You have to remember that I played longer than anybody else on the main tour; I played until I was 40, and then played another six years or so on the seniors tour.

I hate to lose more than I love to win.

Rather than viewing a brief relapse back to inactivity as a failure, treat it as a challenge and try to get back on track as soon as possible.

But why should I read what somebody else thinks of my life when I know the real story?

I was never part of the crowd.

Tennis was never work for me, tennis was fun. And the tougher the battle and the longer the match, the more fun I had.

Back in East St. Louis, tennis wasn't the real thing. If you weren't playing baseball, basketball, football, you were kind of on the outside.

Every time I went out there I performed the best that I could and it was time to step back and clear my mind.

Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you're too damned old to do anything about it.

For the last five or six years the most important thing in my life has been my family.

I always insist on my jeans being ironed. Is that a problem?

I am not looking to be understood or liked. Like me or not, I don't care. I am an outsider, that is the way I was brought up.

I was raised by two women, and that laid the groundwork for the way I treat 'em: with the utmost respect and admiration.

I've been kicked in the teeth more times in tennis than the law ought to allow.

New Yorkers love it when you spill your guts out there. Spill your guts at Wimbledon and they make you stop and clean it up.

People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there.

Use it or lose it.